Veteran news anchor Katie Couric outed former colleague Bryant Gumbel as “incredibly sexist,” claiming that he suggested she should deliver her baby “in a field” and come straight back to the show rather than taking some time off for maternity leave.
Couric made the comments during her recent appearance on comedian Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, where she also said that Gumbel’s attitude was similar to that of many of her male colleagues and the overall culture at NBC at the time.
WATCH:
Katie Couric on Club Random with Bill Maher revealed a couple of interesting facts about her time working on the 'Today Show' with Bryant Gumbel and Matt Lauer:
Couric: "He [Gumbel] got mad at me because I was doing something on maternity leave, and he was giving endless shit for… pic.twitter.com/9KjrtZSbGY— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) April 14, 2024
“He was prickly, but, what a talent. He’s such a seamless broadcaster, eloquent. I mean, when that countdown would happen — five, four, three, two, one — he would just hit it perfect,” Couric said of Gumbel.
And while she did have a number of nice things to say about him — she called him a “natty dresser” and noted that he was intelligent and “really talented” — her overall assessment was that he was “complicated.”
She went on to say that things kind of came to a head when she planned to take maternity leave when her first child was born.
“And he was giving me endless s*** for taking like a month or two off. I was having my first baby,” she said. “He was like, ‘Why don’t you just drop it in the field and come back to work right away or something?'”
Maher, who is friends with Gumbel, pressed Couric on that point and said that it sounded like he probably meant that last remark as a joke — and while Couric conceded that he’d been “kidding,” she said that wasn’t the only thing he had said on the matter.
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“He was goofing on me but giving me a lot of s***. But it was emblematic of sort of an incredibly sexist attitude,” she continued.
“It was a very different environment,” she said of NBC at the time.
Maher noted that there was an “old boys club” feel to the interoffice politics at major networks at the time, adding, “And women had to put up with more. They just did. I mean, you know, not to get all fuzzy and Lifetime Channel about it, but people like you and Barbara Walters or just like women comedians of a certain age, you have to really tip your hat to them because it was harder.”